Posts tagged with ACHIM STEINER

AFP/Getty ImagesConnie Hedegaard, the Danish minister for the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, said financing for poor countries to adapt to a warmer planet was key to a successful accord.

Pushing rich-world countries like the United States and the European Union to lay money on the table for poor countries may prove to be the most significant obstacle to reaching a global agreement on curbing global warming, Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister for the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, warned at an opening ceremony for the conference on Monday.

“Every positive announcement will improve our chances of staying below the 2 degrees Celsius target,” said Ms. Hedegaard, according to an advance copy of her speech. “But as we all know only too well: We are not there yet. This goes for financing as well. And finance may be an even bigger challenge. We have seen some positive dynamics on structure and amounts.”

Ms. Hedegaard called for money from public and private sources, including “money you can count on in the long term.” She called for “a new, additional and predicable financial flow for mitigation, adaptation, technology, and capacity-building in developing countries.”

Heads of state from the European Union are scheduled to meet on Thursday and Friday in Brussels to try to reach an agreement on the amount that they would contribute to a global fund. European Union experts say that fund should total about $150 billion annually by the end of the next decade.

James Kanter/IHTAchim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, and Satinder Bindra, the director of communications for the organization, aboard the Climate Express to
Copenhagen on Saturday.

Achim Steiner, the head of the United Nations Environment Program, warned on Saturday that the United States was among countries that needed to make additional commitments at the Copenhagen climate conference that kicks off on Monday. Otherwise, he said, momentum to agree a new deal to curb climate change could falter.

In an interview on board the Climate Express, a special train service that delivered a variety of European officials and environmental groups from Brussels to Copenhagen, Mr. Steiner said the decision by President Barack Obama to attend the conference during its closing days had definitively turned the event into “a heads-of-state summit and perhaps the largest of its kind on the environment.”

He said an offer by Brazil had been “inspiring” and he praised a commitment by Indonesia. But he said that offers by China and India showed that negotiators from those countries remained “more guarded.”

Commenting on the United States and China, he said: “I still think the numbers put forward by some countries are not the ceiling, they are more like the floor, of what they can offer.”

Mr. Steiner also warned wealthy industrialized countries to come up with an adequate financing package for poorer countries or risk a public outcry in Copenhagen. “Developing countries cannot end up with obligations and no support,” he said.

A failure by rich world nations to help poor nations adapt to climate change and finance a transition to cleaner energy would “create a very emotional context for Copenhagen that if not handled with sensitivity could derail the summit as well,” he said.

Mr. Steiner said the European Union could play an instrumental role in helping to prevent that situation in coming days by putting a figure on the table for the amount of money the bloc would be willing to contribute to a global climate fund totaling about 100 billion euros.

Making trade more free could lead to a rise in carbon-dioxide emissions as a result of greater economic activity. But more trade could also help to stop climate change by increasing the availability of climate-friendly technologies and products.

The report seemed aimed partly at defending continuing efforts by the W.T.O. to broker a long-awaited deal as part of the so-called Doha round of trade talks.

“Contrary to some claims, trade and trade opening can have a positive impact on emissions of greenhouse gases in a variety of ways including accelerating the transfer of clean technology and the opportunity for developing economies to adapt those technologies to local circumstances,” the two groups said in a statement that accompanied the report.Read more…

Global investors spent about $250 billion building new power capacity in 2008, and for the first time the lion’s share of that money went to renewable sources, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Renewable sources accounted for 56 percent of investment dollars, worth $140 billion, while investment in fossil fuel technologies was $110 billion, the U.N. program said in a report, Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2009, released on Wednesday and produced in collaboration with New Energy Finance, a research company based in London.

Large hydropower projects, wind, solar and geothermal were among renewable sources covered by the report. Fossil fuels included projects like building new coal plants in China.

Even so, the long life of power plants meant it would be “some time” before renewable energy dominated the generation mix. Renewable energy still only accounted for 6.2 percent of total power sector capacity in 2008, the U.N. program said, and even after earning more than half of overall investments last year, renewables accounted for just 41 percent of total added capacity.

Furthermore, the current economic crisis weighed heavily in 2008 compared to 2007.

Investors spent just 5 percent more on clean energy in 2008 compared to three previous years of growth exceeding 50 percent. Investment in the United States fell by 8 percent and in Europe it grew by 2 percent, U.N. program officials said.

European and American investment was down because project finance dried up and because tax credits are mostly ineffective in a downturn, the report said.

The latest sign the global slowdown may be slowing a move to greener energy systems comes from Australia.

Pool photo by Dean Lewins/European Pressphoto AgencyKevin Rudd

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Monday that introduction of a cap-and-trade system would be delayed by a year, until mid-2011, after industries protested the introduction of regulations during an economic crisis, and amid signs that the bill would not be approved by the Australian Senate.

Mr. Rudd also outlined other concessions, which included keeping a cap on carbon prices for the first year of the system and offering some industries almost all of their permits free. He said the delay was justified because he would introduce more ambitious targets next year.

In the United States, the administration of President Barack Obama has underlined in recent weeks that passage of climate legislation in the United States may come only next year, after a major United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December.

Many environmentalists had been pushing important rich-world nations like the United States and Australia to pass legislation ahead of the conference, which they say requires commitments by the developed world to force developing countries to join a new global agreement.

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How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, our reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers.